Salem

I understand the risks of a high stakes perma-death style RPG. But given those risks... do Salemites prefer a frontier style system where the strong are free to prey upon the weak?

I largely expected that in a sandbox style games such as this, the player base would self-select to form some loose coalition of justice. If for no other reason than to offer some semblance of protection over the large investments in towns and characters.

Does such a coalition exist? I understand that it might only exist for the oligarchy, and therefore not need to advertise, but the plebs still tend to whisper about the Bilderberg Club or the Illuminati....

Has there been any polls checking what the breakdown of Bartle archetypes playing Salem look like? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test

If not, does anyone have any guesses what the breakdown might be?

Salemites prefer a frontier style system where they are self reliant and free to do what they want.
The Tribe was the group that most concerned its self with matters of 'justice'.
If you polled everyone who plays the game you would find players that from all the archetypes, but if you only did those active on the forums you will likely get a very strong slant towards killers and socializers as achievers and explorers frequently don't care about the forums.

I appear to be an explorer.

Trusting anyone is a sure way to get yourself killed and your base destroyed, so yeah, not much cooperation going on. It's useless to draw comparisons to real life, because IRL most people aren't expendable spies.

Potjeh wrote:Trusting anyone is a sure way to get yourself killed and your base destroyed, so yeah, not much cooperation going on.

Not everyone is a hermit there are plenty of towns and groups of people working together in the game.

Took the test last night, got explorer, but with a 60% socializer score.

Cheena wrote:

I can confidently say I already expected that result

The killer part though is totally off >.> I hope ..... dun dun dunnnnnnnnn

Potjeh wrote:Trusting anyone is a sure way to get yourself killed and your base destroyed, so yeah, not much cooperation going on. It's useless to draw comparisons to real life, because IRL most people aren't expendable spies.

I'm not sure I fully understand this? I was looking to make almost the opposite argument. Are infiltrators really so easy and common in Salem? Certainly there is no barrier to starting a new alt. Yet, time is not free. Is the payoff from the betrayal of trust really more beneficial than the payoff from cooperation? Isn't such behavior ultimately self-destructive? Does not a system that preys upon itself without giving back more than it takes ultimately lose in the end?

It's a bit like playing poker and cheating. Everyone chips in, and when the pot is big enough you cheat, take it and run. In the end you've won, and managed to cash in on everyone else's effort. And you make the assumption that betrayed people won't need town mates in the future, or that they're somehow a finite resource. The game is getting pushed towards the need for towns and much more cooperation than before, so people will be forced to make themselves even partially vulnerable, and thus being an infiltrator that gets the job done would be a lucrative business.